The Harrow Nature Conservation Forum is seeking an assistant warden for Bentley Priory Nature Reserve. The position would be initially for four months, at the end of which both parties would decide whether to continue.

Bentley Priory Nature Reserve is the best known of the sites we maintain, lying north of the Uxbridge Road and northwest of central Stanmore. The reserve is a patchwork of woods and open grassland within which lie two bodies of water, Summerhouse Lake (named for Queen Adelaide’s lakeside gazebo) and Boot Pond. Heriot’s Wood is ancient, that is, it has certainly been a wood since 1600 and probably ever since the last glaciers retreated. Many of the trees here are hornbeam, a species that is characteristic of ancient woods. To the west of Summerhouse Lake stands the “Master”, a mighty oak at least 500 years old. The open grassland is “unimproved”, meaning that it has never been treated with fertilizer and hence is rich in wild flowers. It has been designated a site of special scientific interest (S.S.S.I.) by Natural England. Many interesting and relatively uncommon birds can be seen or heard including buzzard, spotted flycatcher and bullfinch. In summer warblers such as whitethroat, garden warbler, blackcap, chiffchaff and willow warbler breed in the scrubland in Spring Meadow. In winter, large numbers of redpoll, siskin, redwing, fieldfare and goldcrest arrive from mainland Europe and Scandinavia.

Members of the warden team take time getting to know the site and then take responsibility for its management and for interaction with the public. Collectively the warden team, together with the Biodiversity Officer and the Public Realm manager from Harrow Council and Natural England and other external bodies, create the strategy for managing Bentley Priory Nature Reserve. Management has two strands, maintenance of the present ecological structure (for example, by mowing the grassland space to prevent succession to scrub) and carefully planned improvements (for example, the creation of new ponds).

Specific roles and responsibilities include:

• Spending time on the site, getting to know the paths, plants and animals.
• Low scale maintenance of the site such as picking up litter and cutting back branches that are impeding paths.
• Participation in the creation of management plans.
• Supervision of volunteer working parties. Volunteers from the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV) perform jobs such as scrub clearance and fence building. They are accompanied by a supervisor who is responsible for safety, transport and refreshments, so the warden’s role is specifically to supervise the work done.
• Contact with the public. Wardens should talk to members of the public about the site and distribute leaflets. They should encourage good behaviour and, where possible and safe, discourage bad behaviour such as allowing dogs to run free in the vicinity of cattle or in Spring Meadow during bird nesting season. Where direct intervention would be unsafe, wardens should call from help from the Stanmore Park Safer Neighbourhoods Police Team or, for immediate help, call 999.
• Attendance at Harrow Nature Conservation Forum meetings, which are held three times a year, usually on Tuesday evenings at the Civic Centre, Station Road.
• Assistance with stalls at public shows and other profile raising events.

Opportunities will be provided for wardens to be trained in identification of specific plant or animal groups and in the use of horticultural equipment such as brush cutters and chain saws, leading to vocational qualifications including LANTRA and NPTC.

For more information, contact Peter Peretti on 020 8954 2918 or Stephen Bolsover on admin@harrowncf.org.